Ada Eldevik-Stjernqvist

• Eldevik-Stjernqvist, Ada (2026). Framing the pandemic era : Different understandings of pathogenic landscapes in Norway. I Støen, Mariel Cristina; Jakobsen, Jostein & Rutt, Rebecca Leigh (Red.), One Health, Ecology, and the Politics of Emerging Infectious Diseases. Routledge. ISSN 9781003558217. s. 106–122. doi: 10.4324/9781003558217-7. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  This chapter explores different understandings of disease, encompassing various perspectives on uncertainties, infection pathways, and risks, by focusing on the first-ever outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in commercial poultry production in Jæren, Norway. Understanding these dynamics is valuable for understanding the complexities of disease and meat production relationships within the context of heightened threats of emergence, spread, and outbreaks of infectious diseases. Illuminating diverse and sometimes contradictory framings of disease matters because varying perceptions of infectious disease can generate uncertainties, tensions, and decreased trust. After detailing the historical and political developments of Jæren, especially as related to the emergence of commercial poultry production as it exists today, the chapter then unpacks how some of the key actors in this context – Norwegian farmers and human and animal health authorities – understand HPAI. By considering and contrasting multiple disease framings, this chapter uncovers an often-unrecognized aspect of the relationships among wild and domestic animals, nature, humans, and pathogens and, especially, how these interact in the meat production landscape of Jæren in times of worsening disease threat.

• Støen, Mariel Cristina; Jakobsen, Jostein; Barbesgaard, Mads; Rutt, Rebecca Leigh & Eldevik-Stjernqvist, Ada (2025). Dangerous Liaisons: Unveiling the Co-Constitution of Emerging Infectious Diseases and Industrial Meat Production. Antipode. ISSN 0066-4812. 57(4), s. 1320–1341. doi: 10.1111/anti.70021. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) have intensified over the last decade, spotlighting the concept of “epicentre” as a means of locating disease origins. Although epicentre thinking can facilitate rapid interventions, it often overlooks the political-economic and ecological forces driving outbreaks. Drawing on critical geography, political ecology, and global supply chain analyses, we reconceptualise the epicentre as “a set of relations rather than a place”, emphasising how capitalist production, ecological disruption, and pathogen circulation intersect. From this relational standpoint, epicentres emerge as intersections of multiple capitals, rather than isolated points. Using HPAI in global poultry production as an illustration, we argue that biosecurity measures shaped by epicentre thinking often bolster industrial expansion while deflecting systemic critique. We conclude with a five-point research agenda for a relational geographical approach to disease outbreaks, highlighting turnover times, cost and risk distribution, producer incorporation, labour regimes, and governance mechanisms.

• Eldevik-Stjernqvist, Ada; Nielsen, Niels Duus; Nordrum, Solfrid Ingriddatter; Rutt, Rebecca Leigh & Aguilar-Støen, Mariel (2024). Dirty lives, wild birds, clean places, and exceptional health: a critical discourse analysis of Danish and Norwegian news coverage of avian influenza risk. Health, Risk and Society. ISSN 1369-8575. 26(7-8), s. 350–367. doi: 10.1080/13698575.2024.2412102. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  Avian influenza outbreaks are recurring worldwide. In Norwegian and Danish media, fluctuating attention has been paid to these outbreaks and the coverage that exists largely portrays the situation as a distant problem, limited to so-called non-Western countries. In the present article, we have analysed news articles from two Norwegian and two Danish newspapers published in 2006/2008, 2017 and 2021 using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). By analysing linguistic articulations of risk and blame for avian influenza in Norwegian and Danish media, we explore how this portrayal creates discursive distinctions between risk and blame ‘here’ in Europe and ‘there’ in Asian and African countries. We discuss these discursive contrasts in light of Bergamo’s theory of ideology of health progress and Douglas’ understanding of hygiene as cultural ideas. Our analysis reveals that dominant portrayals of avian influenza in the news media construct particular discourses of blame, risk, and responsibility for disease emergence and spread that are ideologically underpinned by an understanding of disease management, meat production, and animal health in Norway and Denmark as exceptional. We argue that this may have implications for perceptions of places at risk of emergence and spread of viruses and the nature of responses for pandemic preparedness and disease eradication.

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• Aguilar-Støen, Mariel; Eldevik-Stjernqvist, Ada & Rødvik, Trym Daniel (2026). The good life, African swine fever and rural transformations in Norway. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv Vis sammendrag

  In the wake of the African Swine Fever outbreak in Sweden in 2023, Norway decided to eradicate its own wild boar population. While the disease only affects wild boar and domestic pigs, it has affected hunting, farming and the overall relationship between rural populations and their natural environment. Simultaneously, the last decades have seen a significant agrarian restructuring in which specialization and intensification have been the norm. Today, only three supply chains deliver to the market in what has effectively become a market triopoly, leading to corporate concentration and oligopsony or even monopsony in some areas for farmers. As such, a constellation of socio-natural moments is differentially affected by the threat of the disease, leading to policy changes, supply chain adaptations and changes in rural aspirations to a good life. Focusing here on the latter, this paper seeks to contribute to earlier debates by treating aspirations as socially embedded and collectively mediated orientations toward the future. As such, aspirations are articulated through concerns that exceed the individual and even the household. They are bound up with the future of the village, the farm, the forest, the pork sector, and the wider rural social fabric. We seek to analyse the intersections of i) the collective reproduction of rural life, ii) territorial belonging, iii) moral obligations to the collective, and iv) the notion of a bio-secure modernity. As such, moving beyond the notion of aspirations as simply an expression of lifestyle preferences, this paper critically engages with disease as a driver of agrarian change.

• Støen, Mariel Cristina; Jakobsen, Jostein & Eldevik-Stjernqvist, Ada (2024). Hvorfor vi bør være bekymret for fugleinfluensa. Aftenposten. Fulltekst i vitenarkiv

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